


careful symmetry

by SETFORSTUN



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: M/M, Silicon Valley AU, tech au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-28 15:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SETFORSTUN/pseuds/SETFORSTUN
Summary: It happens this way because that’s how it always is. Two halves of a scissor, the work of opposing forces.(Brian and Jae meet as unpaid interns at a no-name startup software developer in California.)





	careful symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry 2 dy6 apocalypselist

When you’ve grown up in the tech capital of the country the way Brian has it’s less jarring to actually enter, no longer spectator but prey. He knows how it works, has had other prospective start-up-ers serve him Thai food downtown, make his burrito at Chipotle. His barista side-job has never surprised him, nor his grueling unpaid hours interning. Brian had sat with his head down in his lecture halls and learned Python, learned _coding_ , because _technology is profitable_ had etched itself into the curve of his mother’s smile, the loop of his father’s signature on the tuition check. Here’s where he and Jae differ.

Jae’s here because he knows talk is half the game in this industry, and words have been his best and only defense. But he's not from here, not in the same way-- living like the pool was just a little too small, breezing through his polisci classes with ease because if you always have something to say they usually don't care if you've really said nothing at all.

The first day interning at LiveLoop Jae shakes Brian’s hand with a cocky sort of half-smile and asks him what his 'visions' are. A part of Brian wants to ask him if he’s joking, but the bigger part takes too long to respond-- and Jae, freshly-emptied moving boxes still stacked in the kitchen of his San Jose apartment, launches into his dream to develop the next big social media platform. It’s almost identical to what the guy who made his boba last week had described over the rattling of the drink shaker, but what Brian says when Jae pauses for breath is _that sounds really interesting_.

But that’s not how scissors work, not yet. They require symmetry. There’s a push but there’s also a pull.

Maybe there’s many pulls. Like right now, Brian tugging Jae’s hand back towards the mattress on the floor. Or those times before work, Brian pulling the lapels of Jae’s jacket down gently, tilting his head up just the tiniest bit to kiss him. Or maybe it’s not too long ago now, Jae yanking his LiveLoop ID lanyard over his head for the final time. The tug Brian resists to stoop and pick it up off the linoleum tiles for him.

One day, maybe a month in at LiveLoop, they both steal GoogleBikes, pedal to Castro street for lunch. Brian doesn’t talk much around Jae usually, just enough to respond to the near-constant commentary, but Jae's unusually quiet as they settle in to their seats, pass the menus back to the waitress. He starts to get nervous three silent minutes into their ramen, until Jae breathes deep and opens his mouth. _What about you_ , he asks, stiltedly, over his half-eaten bowl of ramen. He can’t seem to meet Brian’s eyes without blinking. _What do you like to do?_

Brian had cupped that question with the broth in the well of his spoon for just a moment, the steam trailing off into the air. Jae looked like he was holding his breath, as if trying very hard to slow his world to meet Brian’s pace.

Brian has always loved food, and restaurants, and documenting what he eats. When he says that sheepishly in the dimly lit rustling of the restaurant Jae’s face had lit up with responses and anecdotes, but held them on the tip of his tongue, Brian remembers. Brian still remembers. With this careful enthusiasm so bright in Jae’s eyes, he had looked so vital and alive, so beautiful it was kind of staggering.

The push and pull becomes easier after that. Brian gets a little meaner. Jae gets a little quieter. Sometimes Brian will drive Jae home, Jae ordering Ike’s sandwiches from the passenger seat while Brian merges into commuter traffic on '280. Later they eat them on the couch, knees knocking under Jae’s shitty coffee table. Brian swipes Jae’s tomatoes. Jae lets him.

A push and a pull, you know? A snip.

 

Brian's favorite part of the week is Friday morning, when he trades his LiveLoop lanyard for a dark brown apron and t-shirt. While he's not as enamored with being on his feet all day, being a barista applies what he loves best about coding-- the series of steps, commands, to produce a specific outcome, the iteration and reiteration of those commands in different combinations. It's straightforward, and Brian loves the squeal of steam when he works the espresso machine, loves knocking the perfect rounds of compressed grounds into the compost bin. Later he will love how the smell of coffee lingers in his hair, prompting Jae to nose into his neck happily when they're watching TV on the couch. 

But before that, maybe two months into LiveLoop, he's straightening the coffee-cup icon on his t-shirt, almost finishing his well-rehearsed  _W_ _elcome to Philz Coffee! What can I get for you?_ before Jae suddenly appears at the counter with a grin.  _How about that sweet coworker discount?_  

Brian tries really hard not to crack a smile, but Jae's wiggling his eyebrows in a conspiratorial way, and fine, he has a free drink to spare anyway. And there must be something in the way he he says  _I guess,_ biting back another grin, because while he's pouring water through one of the medium roast drip filters his coworker Jimin teases  _who's that?_   with a nudge.

Brian's sure he doesn't know what she's talking about.

  

Jae hates coding. When he admits this to Brian, fingers beating out frenetic rhythms on the side of his cup after three months at LiveLoop, Brian just laughs around his boba straw, says _wow, you’re really subtle about those things. Never would have guessed._  Jae chuckles into his drink, but it’s softer than normal, leg bouncing. His fingertips pound the tabletop, the white plastic finish.

Here’s another work of opposing forces, but not equal ones. The part of Brian that detaches and distances gets crowded out by his hand reaching across to cup Jae’s frantic knuckles in his palm, pressing them gently into the table. Back then, Brian holding his hand, Brian’s eyes on him unwavering, Jae had tried so hard to just look at him. _I don’t think I know what I’m doing here_ , he had mumbled, half around his straw as if it would hold the words behind his lips.

Way back, even farther back, on the first day they had met, Jae had looked Brian in the eye, said _maybe you’ll be the Wozniak to my Jobs_ , winking. Brian had laughed, but avoided Jae’s eyes.

But this time, when Jae forced his eyes up over the tiny booth table, forced his hand limp under Brian’s, the gaze they caught was soft. Smooth, like skin, like paper.

 

The blink, the slice, comes later. Comes with Jae throwing his hat, that stupid paper In-N-Out Burger uniform on the couch, his _why do you let them treat you like shit there? How can you even stand it?_  Brian doesn’t have enough practice yet to let the words fall—the pace is bruising—the slam of their bedroom door, Jae’s bedroom door, before he can even get to the heart of the question.

It takes a long time, Brian watching some latenight bullshit on the TV while he tries to decide if the closed door is a cut to leave unattended, when the handle clicks and Jae pads over to the couch. It’s so quiet, quieter than that very first time in the ramen place, only a car engine down the block. Jae’s never been good at apologizing—it’s one thing to hold the words in but another to beat them back entirely. So when he sits down, oh so gently placing his hand on Brian’s knee, it feels like almost enough. _I’m just worried they’re gonna get you, man_ , and Brian knows that's edging on  _I love you_.

But that’s the thing about scissors, isn’t it? They need both sides to be complete, but their function is to divide.

Jae's last day at LiveLoop was definitely a divide. No matter how many times Jae says _I hate it here_ Brian hears _I hate being here with you_. And Jae’s so fucking headstrong, and Brian knows it, he does, but he still doesn’t expect when Jae opens the seventh rejection email in five months for a paid position at LiveLoop in the lobby and throws his phone onto one of the decorative ottomans. Doesn’t expect Jae to raise his voice _I’m done with this bullshit_ and make the receptionist jump. When Jae’s hand moves to his lanyard Brian says _hey_ , so softly, like a palm cupping frantic knuckles. _I can’t keep doing this, Brian_ , Jae says. _It’s eating me alive_.

It’s dramatic, but that’s not unusual for Jae— what’s unusual is his silence after, pulling the lanyard over his head, letting it hit the ground, walking out the front door. Brian’s supervisor finds him in the lobby, still sitting on an ottoman, looking at Jae’s lanyard looped across the tiles. Jae probably thinks he’s chickenshit but Brian’s still thinking about his mother’s smile and his father’s best pen and he doesn’t say a word. That’s always been his specialty.

 

Before this the pace builds steadily, Brian getting more words in edgewise, Jae's abrupt bark of laughter--and is it almost disbelief Brian sees in his eyes?--as if happily shocked Brian has said anything at all. Jae makes a point to find at least one new place to get lunch every week, pays for Brian's meal occasionally as 'gas money reimbursement.'

Brian realizes when his mother asks how hard they've been working him that he barely returns to his parents' house to sleep, much less to share meals and speak. He's only at home still because rent here would be such a ridiculously high expense,  _and what's the point of that_ _?_ his father's voice in his ears. 

After that he begins to notice more. Brian would be lying if he didn't acknowledge how he lingers, how often he stays on Jae's shitty futon until it just edges on too late to drive home. Jae hasn't said anything about staying and Brian is scared of overstepping, but he thinks sometimes it'd just be easier if he could drive home in the morning.

And he doesn't mean to do it, he swears, but one Friday night they try to marathon Star Wars. Brian's shift at Philz isn't till 4:00 the next day, so there's not really a rush, and by the time Jae's queueing up  _Attack of the Clones_ (machete order) Brian slips away. 

He wakes up at 3:00AM with the only light the moon filtering through Jae's curtains. Someone (he knows who) has laid a ratty knit blanket across his chest, and the snoring emanating from the reclining armchair Brian helped Jae pick up from Savers a couple weeks ago suggests that Jae also couldn't last through the movie. 

Brian curls tighter along the Ikea futon, smiling into the hem of the blanket. 

  

Much later than this, Brian will still be curled along Jae's futon, but he'll rest his head in Jae's lap as they watch Extreme Home Makeovers instead. And the utility bills will be strewn on the coffee table with empty pizza boxes, another payment they split. Jae's long fingers carding through Brian's hair.

But Brian can't know this yet, so he just helps Jae unearth his old dorm comforter to fold on one side of the couch, _for when you'd rather stay_. Then how he starts keeping a toothbrush in his laptop bag, spare set of work clothes in the bottom drawer of Jae's dresser.  _In case it happens on a weeknight,_ they say, since it's an hour drive from Jae's to Brian's. Brian thinks Jae secretly loves it when he stays over on a weeknight, so he doesn't have to wake up at ass o-clock to catch CalTrain to LiveLoop. 

It's less convenient for Brian, farther away, but he kind of loves it too, if mostly because it means he doesn't have to be at  _home_. 

And maybe a small part of him loves those rare times Jae falls asleep before him, how his head droops towards Brian's. How his mouth hangs open when he snores. 

Sometimes they don’t need opposing forces. Sometimes the angle of the blades align and all the slice requires is forward motion.

The fourth month at LiveLoop slid through with few snags, smooth enough that when Jae finally, fumblingly presses his lips to Brian’s one night watching TV on that futon it doesn’t even feel that much like a revelation.  _Your lips taste like pesto, dude, how much did you even get on that sandwich?_

Brian giggles, reaches over to lift Jae's glasses gently off his nose before kissing him again; shifting on the sofa until he pulls away from Jae's mouth, watching his eyelids flutter as he looks up at Brian, now kneeling over his skinny thighs. 

And Brian's learned to love Jae's chatter, but never more than how he mutters into Brian's clavicle as he shifts over Jae's lap.

Mouth slack, eyes heavy. 

 

 And now is not much different, Jae getting up in the middle of the night because he forgot to take his contacts out, Brian protesting the lost warmth, reaching out with a whine. Jae coming back from the bathroom and letting Brian press him back into the mattress, kissing along his shoulders, holding him tight. 

It's only cold at night, when the moon filters through Jae's ratty venetian blinds, so Brian uses this time to pull so impossibly close, closer than either could ever justify in a cloudless morning. And Jae will never deny it, even when he knows he smells like ground beef and grease, even when he knows Brian went to the Chipotle on El Camino for lunch. If Brian farts while curled along Jae's back they both laugh but neither move.

 

The daytime has always made it harder. When the light hits so many things at once Brian can't concentrate, sometimes catches himself bouncing his leg the way Jae used to do during staff meetings. Sometimes he floats, touching nothing at all. 

One evening Brian comes home later than usual, caught up fixing a bug in software due for beta testing the next day. Jae had worked the morning shift at In-N-Out, the one that lets him out early enough to stew in his own juices.

 _Work held you up?_ Jae had asked, sidling into the kitchen, and Brian had known from the start, one hand on the refrigerator door paused.  _Yeah_ , he'd said.  _Found a bug halfway through the day, Paul needed all hands on deck._

Jae gets this look on his face sometimes when he forgets to be careful and it has Brian's knuckles already whitening, bracing. _You'd think if they really needed all hands they'd pay you for your overtime._

They're back doing this again, and Brian's really looked at it inside and out. And it'd be nice to accept nothing less than 'fair compensation,' he thinks, but maybe at the heart of the issue is he still doesn't know how to believe the world _owes_ him anything just yet. If he sits with his head down through this, too, it'll come. It's supposed to come.

Jae fucking hates when Brian says things like that, and maybe at his core Brian does too. But Jae's words are loose, on the cusp of falling over his lips, ready to snip, to bite. Every conversation a high-school debate team arena that he’s determined not to lose, his _what do you want, Brian? Do you even want anything at all?_  spilling, as if Brian is supposed to know, as if the answer should be more than just _you, sometimes_. But Brian’s gotten meaner, quicker. _What, like you? Like you’re living out your fucking 'visions' or whatever at the In-N-Out on El Camino?_  

Brian’s grip on the refrigerator door like a vice. Jae frozen in the kitchen doorway tapping again, always tapping.

The silence stretching between them like a ribbon, pulled taut, waiting for the snip.

And after a moment Jae’s face sort of crumples, fingers slackening, and Brian knows the ribbon has been cut, and he’s tired of it too, the pretense.

So 2:00AM finds them both on Jae’s kitchen floor, puffy eyes and hands pressed into the linoleum, leaning back against the fridge. It’s Brian reaching across again, cupping Jae’s bare knee in his palm. _This floor is definitely disgusting_ , he says, head lolled back and sidelong glance with a grin he tries to plaster on his face in the most natural way possible. He knows he’s not succeeding, but Jae takes the bait anyway. _I’m wearing my middle school gym shorts, Brian. I can admit I’m disgusting_. Brian leans to rest his head on Jae’s shoulder, doesn’t bother to blow his damp hair out of his eyes. _Yeah, we both are. It’s okay._

They've both been here long enough to understand _I forgive you._

__

Maybe they've both been here too long. Brian thinks about that often but especially now as he noses along Jae's spine, ignoring his halfhearted grumbling about who really should be the big spoon. Jae likes to pretend that he's the one to curve around, to accommodate, but Brian knows when there's no reputation at stake he'd rather be held. So he presses a kiss to the base of Jae's neck and says nothing.

It's been almost a year now since they both walked in with shiny-new lanyards and keycards, since Jae winked at him with 'visions' quick on his tongue. When they would go out to lunch and Brian would finish his food fifteen minutes before Jae, chewing in silence while Jae talked through it all. Around three months now since Jae started working at the Genius Bar in the Apple store on University Ave. 

Brian remembers. Brian still remembers. Even when the email two months ago had said he'd gotten the full-time paid position from LiveLoop they had both so coveted. Even through Jae's attempts to be happy for him, how carefully he'd held back the hurt in his eyes. 

But Jae had said that they were eating him alive, and so now Brian grips Jae's shoulders with more force, more grounding. Jae shifts, a little, and there's a question across his shoulder-blades that Brian's heard before.  _You okay?_

Brian's stayed in the same place his whole life, worked with the same iterations and reiterations of steps. But the steps have begun to move around him, and doesn't Brian know that changing variables can render outdated steps useless. Like how he's quitting the coffee shop, like how now he's  _here_ , in this San Jose apartment, Jae breathing so gently beside him, the streetlight through the blinds hitting the stack of flattened boxes on the opposite wall, and he thinks he can't afford to wait too long to adapt his commands. The scissor blades, held open, cut nothing without some kind of catalyst. 

So Brian murmurs _I love you_  into Jae's neck, since being open has never been his strong suit.

And Jae's good at words but not usually the ones that matter, so he leans back over his shoulder to kiss Brian's hair. Brian almost misses it, Jae's lips moving just slightly, pressed to the top of his head.

_(I love you too.)_

 

**Author's Note:**

> hm. yeah sorry about the mess
> 
> (i got the scissor icon idea from kamau brathwaite's book elegguas!! lovely strange poetry abt death & africana diaspora)


End file.
